


Hope Means all the World

by missalline



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sort Of, cannon compliant character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-24 01:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18159797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missalline/pseuds/missalline
Summary: She hasn't heard from Stephen since the Dissolve, and Christine is scared.





	Hope Means all the World

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. All mistakes are mine.

In many ways, the days and weeks following the Dissolve are worse than the days after the Battle of New York. The Battle of New York was localized, and people had been able to run after seeing the hole open in the sky. Yes, there were hundreds, possibly thousands, of casualties, but even with those numbers the fallout of Battle of New York ranked with natural disasters.

The Dissolve was like nothing anyone had ever seen.

To most people, the Dissolve came without warning. Over the course of several moments, billions of people were just... gone. News outlets were so busy covering the Dissolve that news about the Battle of Wakanda didn’t break for days afterward, and even when it did few people connected it with the Dissolve. Everyone was too busy dealing with their private tragedies to connect the dots.

Unless you happened to work for any hospital, anywhere. Then you were too busy dealing with the tragedies of other people. Nothing could be done about those caught in the Dissolve, but the impact was extensive. Many of the Dissolved had been flying planes, or driving busses, or any other number of things that caused countless injuries that needed to be tended too. Half of the earth’s population Dissolved, but many more died or were injured due to the aftermath.

Christine had been just about to head home when the Dissolve had happened. She had had a relatively uneventful shift, and was looking forward to going home and relaxing in a nice hot bath. She was chatting with Sarah, a friend and fellow surgeon who was also heading home, but pulled a few steps ahead when Sarah stopped to adjust her bag. Everything was normal. But then Sarah spoke.

“Christine?” she said, panic evident in her voice.

Christine turned around. Sarah’s right arm was already gone. Christine watched in horror as the rest of her followed, floating down to an unassuming pile of dust. Looking around, it was easy to see that Sarah wasn’t the only victim. After taking a moment to compose herself, Christine headed right back inside. She had worked the aftermath of the Battle of New York. She knew she was about to be needed.

\----

Two weeks after the Dissolve, Christine gets a call from a number she doesn’t recognize. She ignores it because she’s working. She’s been working practically non-stop, catching small cat-naps here and there. She doesn’t get to check the voicemail for four hours.

“Hello. My name is Kimberly Johnson. I’m with the West Virginia Bureau for Children and Families. I need to speak with you about a child currently in our care. If you would please give me a call back my number is ……….”

Her friend McKayla lives in West Virginia. McKayla is a close friend, practically a sister. A close friend she hasn’t heard from since the Dissolve, despite repeated attempts to contact her and her husband. A close friend who has a four-year-old daughter. For the first time since the Dissolve, Christine breaks down and cries.

\----

Emily, it turns out, hadn’t been found for two days after the Dissolve. A neighbor had finally gone to check on the family after not seeing any movement and found Emily sleeping next to two piles of dust. One grandparent had died years before, and the other three were missing, presumed to be victims of the Dissolve. Both of her parents had been only children. That left CPS scrambling to find an appropriate home for her.

“The speed at which we’re trying to push this through isn’t exactly presidented,” Ms. Johnson tells Christine when she’s able to call her back, “Usually in this type of situation the child stays in foster care until other arrangements can be made through the proper channels, but we’re missing so many foster parents, and the ones we have left are overrun with children who have no one else to take them in. Can you take her?”

“Of course,” Christine says. They talk for a little while longer, figuring out transportation and signing paperwork and everything else that needs to be done in order to make her Emily’s legal guardian. When Christine hangs up, she’s more exhausted than she has been for a long time.

\----

The next morning, Christine quietly slips out of the hospital. Metro General had fared slightly better than many other places and isn’t missing too many members of staff, which is a blessing they had all been thankful for. Christine isn’t desperately needed anymore, and she has to get her apartment ready for the four-year-old that should be arriving that evening. But she has a stop to make before she an go home.

\----

Stephen’s new home is massive and intimidating. Or it had been the first few times she had been there. By her fifth visit to the building Stephen calls the Sanctum, Christine came to understand that as long as she was nice to it, it would be nice to her. So when she gets there that morning, the door opens before she asks it to.

It takes her a few minutes to build up the courage to go in. The watched Sarah Dissolve; she hadn’t heard from McKayla and Rob and now she’s the legal guardian of their daughter. She hasn’t heard from Stephen either. She’s scared of what she’ll find inside. She’s scared she’ll find a pile of dust being guarded by a sentient cloak, but she’s almost more scared she won’t find anything. She’s never really understood the concept of wanting closure until now.

The first glance of the foyer doesn’t reveal anything, and Christine is preparing for a more exhaustive search when she hears a door open. She goes to it quickly, hoping she’ll find Stephen, but all she sees is a room with a couple of tables and weird bookshelves.

“Hello?” she calls tentatively, and then again a bit more strongly, “Hello?” No response. Christine sighs. She had been so hopeful. She closes her eyes, trying to hold back tears.

“Dr. Palmer,” a man (that she immediately recognizes as not Stephen) says with a soft voice. She jumps, and her eyes fly open. She takes one look at Wong’s face and can’t hold back the tears anymore. For the second time since the Dissolve, she crumples and cries.

\----

The Sanctum has an incredibly cozy kitchen for such an imposing building. Right now, it’s not making her feel any better. Neither is the mug of tea in her hands, which is pretty sure is a little bit magic and is _supposed_ to be helping her be less sad. It’s not working. She just feels numb.

“You haven’t heard from him either,” Christine finally says, breaking the silence. It’s the first thing either of them have said since Wong said her name. He had honest-to-god _held her_ while she cried, then gently steered her to a chair in the kitchen when she was done. He hadn’t asked her about the tea either. He just made it, and set in on the table in front of her with a commanding _thunk_.

“No,” he confirms, “I haven’t.”

“What does that mean?” Christine knows what it means, but she still need to hear someone else say it.

“It means that he’s probably gone,” Wong says in his usual stoic tone, though not unsympathetically.

If Christine had any tears left she would cry again. Instead she just nods. “I think I already knew that.” She sips her tea, and thinks maybe it’s starting to work.

They sit there in their sad companionship for a few silent minutes. “Do you know what caused it?” Christine finally asks. After a moment Wong gives her the low-down. Infinity Stones, a madman named Thanos who wanted them in order to do exactly what he had done, Stephen trying to stop him.

“So he failed.” Christine says, disbelief evident in her voice. Stephen doesn’t _fail_. Part of her doesn’t even believe that it’s possible. He was always so good at everything, and could achieve anything he set his mind to. The fact that he could fail with so much on the line doesn’t seem real.

Wong doesn’t respond right away. Christine looks up at him, and he is clearly deep in thought. When he does respond his words are careful, calculated.

“It is possible,” he says, “that Stephen, and Tony Stark, and whoever else was with them, failed. It is _possible_ , but I’m not inclined to believe that it’s true.” Wong stops speaking to let Christine process what he just said. Apparently she does have more tears to cry, because they start leaking from her eyes. But this time, they are good tears. They are tears of relief. She doesn’t know Wong very well, but she knows him well enough to know that he doesn’t sugar-coat anything. If he thinks there is a chance, however small, that Stephen (and apparently Ironman?) didn’t fail in their mission to protect the universe, then that tiny chance does actually exist. When Christine is ready to hear more, she gives him a signal to go on.

“Stephen had one of the Infinity Stones. It was his duty to protect it, with his life if necessary. That duty was a responsibility that Stephen had accepted. He has spent a great deal of time coming up with different strategies to protect the Stone in his care. Enough strategies that for Thanos to have gotten all six of the Infinity Stones, Stephen had to _willingly_ part with his. Have you ever known Stephen Strange to give up?”

Christine snorted. “No.” Even after the accident he never gave up. It’s how he became a wizard in the first place.

“Christine,” Wong says, the first time he’s ever used her first name, “I don’t think any of them are dead. When a sorcerer dies, there’s a… reaction at Kamar-Taj. It’s like the place itself is mourning the severance of the connection between the sorcerer and the magic. That hasn’t happened. After Hong Kong, the buildings at Kamar-Taj were grey for a week. The buildings haven’t reacted at all, and we lost more people than we did when we dealt with the zealots. And if Stephen specifically were dead, than this Sanctum would be reacting as well.”

“Then what happened to them?” Christine asks, voice practically a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Wong says, “But I know that Stephen could look into the future, and I know that he wouldn’t have given up the Time Stone unless there was a reason for it.”

Those dots aren’t hard to connect. The only reason Stephen would have given Thanos the Stone was if that action was necessary for winning in the long run.

“So there’s hope?” she asks, the concept bringing her to tears yet again.

“There is hope,” Wong says. He takes her hand with both of his.

Hope might be all they have, but hope is all they need.


End file.
